This invention relates to methods, systems and apparatus to make communication networks more resilient, stealthier and robust.
In multi-link wireless radios, also referred to as user equipment UE, a radio link is assigned one IP address. In a wireless UE with multiple wireless links, the UE can be assigned multiple IP addresses. For packets originating from a UE, the UE is configured to use one of available pre-determined links for packets destined to a particular IP address.
The forwarding or routing paths are statically configured and they are generally known as routing or forwarding tables. In a wireless UE with one link active at a time, these tables become relatively simple and the tables are not updated until the assigned IP address is changed. These tables as a result are either preconfigured and packaged with operating systems or changed manually by a user with administrative rights.
However, in wireless UE with multiple links active at a time, the forwarding table rules could be used to route traffic through a particular link which can provide better Quality-of-Service (QoS), higher throughput, more security, lesser probability of interception, lesser probability of jamming, load balancing etc. The changing channel conditions may also make desirable changing the routing or forwarding tables. The channel conditions may change due to environmental changes or intentional jamming action or simply moving to different geographies with different regulations and battlefield environments. The routing tables or forwarding tables may also change due to change in mission objectives.
The above conditions represent external environmental changes, the mission requirements change or policy changes and the routing or forwarding tables do not change until necessitated by the above factors.
In the current networking systems where the routing and forwarding tables are static in nature, they are configured according to preset routing rules determined by the network administrator. The static nature of these routes exposes them to being discovered and have the potential of adversaries gleaning information from the routing metadata. Moreover, the static routes predisposes the information to being snooped along the routes from the source to the destination.